indifference to the best way of doing things; it is a kind of easygoing morality in matters of method." "Let it go at that" seems to be written all over the face of the land. You see it in the slovenliness of their language; in their affectation of slovenliness as a smart thing. You see it in wretchedly laid railway tracks, in swaying telegraph poles, in sliding embankments, in broken-down vehicles with rickety wheels too slight for their work, in harness tied up with a string, in scamped and hurried work everywhere. There seems to be a disdain of thorough workmanship and detail in finish.

The same national feeling is conspicuous in the factory and workshop. You may see machinery racketing itself to pieces and spoiling the material in the attempt to run faster than it can; you see waste of fuel and steam, machinery clogged and spoiling for want of care and cleanliness, the place in a mess and the stuff turned out in a rough, badly finished state. When you see this over and over again, you begin to understand why the United States, with all its natural advantages, requires a prohibitive duty on foreign manufactures which it ought to produce better itself.

The Americans are a highly emulative people, and anxious to beat not only their competitors but themselves. "Beat our own record" is one of the mottoes. A different trait is embodied in another motto "Don't grumble, boost." One method of boosting in America deserves particular attention, that of advertisement. In this Americans lead the world so successfully that no competitor is in the running. Its development is assisted by the very curious trait of toleration of shams. Like the toleration of unfinished work with which it is connected, the toleration of shams is pervasive. It is illustrated in daily life by the pretense of a single class in railway traveling, by the use of such euphemisms as "help" for servant and "charity" for pauperism. Almost an affection for shams is shown in the encouragement given to every kind of imposture. America is the land above all others where everything that appeals to credulity and ignorance flourishes. It is there that new religions arise. It is there that the medical quackeries, the patent foods, the beautifiers, and all that gallery flourish most. I attribute this vogue to the boundless faith of Americans in their own country as the pioneer of civilization and enlightenment, to the wide diffusion of superficial education, and to the general contempt for the experience of mankind at large.

They have no reverence for what is old and proved outside their own borders. The mass of people believe that there is nothing to learn from other countries and that all things are possible in their own land. This feeling amounts to a superstition. In Europe, Germany, for instance, laws are made to be kept, and to that end they

are very carefully made. In the United States the general contempt for law is astonishing. I am inclined to think that it is the most salient feature of American civilization. Laws thought to be oppressive are not obeyed; they are evaded or defied. And I know no country in which laws that interfere with liberty of the individual are so common. They seem to be intended, not for the protection of the public and the maintenance of order, but for the promotion of morality. Of course, they cannot possibly be enforced.

The position of woman in America is peculiar, resting upon the accidental fact that there she is in a minority. The law of supply and demand gives her an effective advantage which the theory of equality enables her to utilize. In Europe, women are subordinated; in America, they are dominant. In the former they take orders; in the latter they give them. In the former the man is the boss; in the latter, the woman. The ideal wife, I suppose, is at once a helpmeet and a stimulus. In Europe the former predominates; in America, the latter. Each exercises a powerful influence on national life. In the former one of the largest elements of national strength is the domestic character of the women. In the latter the feminine stimulus is a great incentive to that strenuous application and restless enterprise which stand out so strongly. Both characters have their weak points; the helpmeet is likely to be blunted to a drudge, the stimulus to be sharpened to a goad. Of the two the latter is the greater evil. The spoiling of women, though it makes the men work, is not good for the women; it fosters an exacting disposition, extravagance, love of amusement, and a distaste for domestic duties which threatens national vitality. And it reacts on the men, who console themselves elsewhere for exactions submitted to at home.

But, as for America, there is, after all, a spirit in the air which is not all due to climate-the spirit of endeavor, of expansion, of belief in a great destiny in which every individual shares. It is an inspiring atmosphere.

66. German Socialized Efficiency30

BY SAMUEL P. ORTH

Is Germany a model for our democracy? What price is she paying for her well advertised efficiency? How is her paternalism affecting human nature?

The lure is a socialized Germany. The State owns railroads, canals, river transportation, harbors, telegraphs, and telephones.

"Adapted from an article in The World's Work, XXVI, 315-321. Copyright (1912).

Banks, insurance, pawnshops, are conducted by the State. Municipalities are landlords of vast estates; they are capitalists owning street car lines, gas plants, electric light plants, theatres, markets, warehouses. The cities conduct hospitals for the sick, shelters for the homeless, soup-houses for the hungry, asylums for the weak and unfortunate, nurseries for the babies, homes for the aged, and cemeteries for the dead.

Add to this the vast and complex system of State education, a system of training that aims at livelihood. Nothing like the perfection, the drill, and the earnest, unsmiling efficiency of these elementary and trade schools exists anywhere else in the world. In 1907, there were 9,000,000 children in the elementary schools, taught by 150,000 teachers, nearly all masters, as the "school ma'am" does not flourish in the Kaiser's realm. Every one of these pupils is headed for a bread-and-butter niche in this land of super-orderliness. And more than 300,000 persons are employed by the State in some form of educational work, training the youth into adeptness, in all sorts of schools.

The army, as well as the school, brings home to every German family the fact that the State is watchful-and jealous. It demands that two full years of every young man be "socialized"; and the peasant woman and the artisan's wife must contribute her toil to the toll that the vast system of State discipline demands.

Even the Church, that form of organized social effort which is everywhere first to break away from the regimen of the State, remains "established." So I might continue through almost every activity—the vast system of State railroads, mines, shipyards-and include even art and music.

This socialized Germany is also an industrialized Germany. Everyone knows how cleverly advertised are German goods. But it is always well to remember that this race of traders and manufacturers has somehow, in one generation, come from a race of solid scholars, patient artisans, and frugal peasants. The old Germany has disappeared; the Germany of the spectacles, the shabby coat, and the book; the Germany of Heidelberg and Weimar. A new order has taken its place. As you ride in the great express, from Cologne to Berlin, you never are out of sight of clusters of tall, smoking chimneys. Symbolic of the new Germany are the Deutsche Bank, the trade of Hamburg, and the steel works of Essen.

Now, how has it been possible to make this transformation? To create out of a slow, plodding, peasant-artisan people an industrialized population, out of a race of scholars a race of manufacturers;

to fill a land no larger than one half of Texas with 65,000,000 people who are breeding at the rate of nearly a million a year, and to engage the State in doing all sorts of things for these thriving families? It is the political miracle of the century, and its socialized efficiency is the talk of the hour. How has it been accomplished?

The Kaiser has adapted, line for line and point for point, the pattern of medieval feudalism to the exigencies of modern industrialism. So, to begin with, the Kaiser has an obedient people, in whom the feudal notion of caste is second nature. Every one has his place, and shall keep it. Such shifting as now is tolerated is due to wealth and to the kind of ambition which luxury always awakens.

You cannot have superimposed classes without obedience. The average German is docile, and wants to be told what to do.

The Government has its eager hands in every pocket, its anxious fingers on every pulse. From the cradle to the grave, the State watches the individual, commands him and, in a way, cares for him; always seeing to it that he has a place in the national economy and that he keeps it.

To an outsider, of course, the inner workings of the mind and heart are hidden. But the outer aspect of the German State is perfectly patent. It is mechanism-there can be no doubt about itthe mechanism of the solar system. It is a land where every member of Society has an ordained orbit and moves in it around the central sun, the State, which radiates a mystic gravitation into every activity-almost every thought-of every man, woman, and child.

Here you see the most varied activities held to the ideals of efficiency through a perfected feudalism. So that all Carl and John need to do is to obey; then they are taught the rudiments of learning and a trade, are insured against the most disturbing episodes of life, assured also of some leisure, considerable amusement, and a decent burial. And that is life!

Of all invented contrivances this German machine is the most amazing, this vast enginery of State with the patents of Hohenzollern, Bismarck, & Co. on every part, that has reduced the life of a great people to complacent routine and merged the rough eccentricities of all into a uniformity of effort and ambition.

It is true that John and Carl can live their ordered lives in routine and contentment, rounding out year after year of plodding toil, paying their dues to the various funds and their taxes to the Government, rearing their families, and entrusting them to the same over-care. But what sort of creatures does it make of John and Carl, and of their children and their childrens' children?

There is no exact way, not even a German way, of measuring originality, individual initiative, and independence. But this also is certain patience, obedience, minute training, do not foster daring and versatility. John and Carl settle down, literally settle down, to an uneventful life, looking forward to no change, taking no risks, seeking no alternatives. Once a butcher, always a butcher. This makes Germany depressing to a restless American who is always willing to "go it alone" and to get "a run for his money."

Some years ago, Mr. Ludwig Max Goldberger gave his countrymen the cheering news that Americans need not be feared, because "all that they have done, we can imitate." This is an actual policy. I have been told by American manufacturers that they have found their machines so exactly copied in German shops that only the absence of the patent dates and of the name of the makers told them that the machines were not made in the American shop. Already this land of drill and obedience is becoming an empire of conscious imitators.

There are on the German horizon ominous portents. First I should place the moral and psychological effects of luxury. Few nations can stand the sapping suction of plenty. The effect of the profligacy that is everywhere apparent in the New Germany will be particularly swift and fatal in a people who for generations have been frugal and plain.

On top of this wealth is an imperial debt that has risen from $490,000,000 in 1901 to $1,345,000,000 in 1912; this without reckoning the provincial and municipal debt which is four times larger than the imperial. The burden of taxation in 1912 was $70 per average family.

And on top of this burden of debts sits the militarist, 1911-12, taking 622,520 young men out of the fields and factories for the standing army. This year 130,000 more are to be called out; and a new and unheard-of war program is proposed to this patient and obedient people. One must admire alike the audacity of the proposal, the patriotism of the voter, and the magnificent discipline that has wrought such submissiveness.

The red omen is the most conspicuous. Socialism is skillfully combining the revolt against this imperial, personal Government, and the desire of the workman for a greater share of the wealth of the land.

If a revolt succeeds, what will happen to this centralized bureaucracy? What will become of the system of state aid and municipal socialism? For without an efficient bureaucracy you cannot have an